Short, Blonde, Pretty, Superstrong-- Wait, What?
by Manchester
Summary: Rick and his group are about to have an encounter they'll find really hard to believe, especially when she then starts to put the moves on Daryl.
1. Chapter 1

After the last few months of nothing else but an actual ongoing zombie apocalypse in the southern United States, the small band of humans led by Rick Grimes who were trying to find a safe place to survive among the end of their world could be forgiven for thinking that at least things couldn't possibly get any stranger.

Wrong.

That morning, Rick, Glenn, and Daryl had gone scavenging together in a small Georgia town off Interstate 85 while the others in their convoy forted up at a rest stop and waited for them to come back with some needed supplies. Sneaking through an alley on the outskirts of this town, weapons ready to instantly kill any walkers they were sure to come across, the trio simultaneously halted in the middle of the passageway. Glancing at each other in wary surprise, the men silently confirmed that they were all hearing the same very odd sounds drifting their way from the alley's end further on at where Rick, Glenn, and Daryl had just stopped.

These continuous noises consisted of a loud _Splat!_ followed by softer pattering sounds, and then it started all over again, without giving any indication of ending soon. Trying to think of what might be causing that, Rick finally shrugged in bafflement and met the others' uncomprehending gazes. Judging by these, they also didn't seem to know what was going on out there either.

Making a quick decision to take a peek for himself, Rick jerked his head towards the alley mouth. Glenn wasn't obviously all that happy over what Rick was suggesting, due to the prompt sour expression which developed upon the younger man's face. After a couple more moments, though, Glenn did a reluctant nod, along with a sudden glower sent right back at Rick that he was surely going to blame the former sheriff's deputy if this went wrong. Satisfied, Rick shot another look at where Daryl was standing sideways in the alley to keep watch both up and down this narrow lane at the same time. That meant only the left side of Daryl's head could be seen by Rick, who nonetheless received an accepting grimace from the part of this Dixon brother's face presented to their leader.

Moving as quietly as possible while the bizarre noises continued, the trio advanced towards the end of the alley with Glenn and Rick side-by-side and Daryl sidling along after at their backs. When they reached this while still hidden from sight from the street, the men all stopped again. Rick was closest to the brick building corner, so he carefully edged his head past this, keeping the rest of his body inside the alley. Peeking out, Rick saw about a hundred feet ahead some sort of village green there, a small park set in between the divided roadway running through the town.

Right now, that park was entirely filled by a mob of walkers. At least fifty or so, in Rick's appalled opinion-

_Splat!_

Dammit, there it went again! Only, this time, Rick was certain it was coming from the other side of the undead crowd. He kept on staring at where he'd heard this inexplicable sound, ignoring how Glenn was crowding up against him and trying to look over Rick's shoulder. A flicker of motion caught then Rick's eye.

Above the head level of the shuffling bunch of corpses bumping and jostling each other, a metal bar abruptly shot up into view. With a matching blur of speed, what Rick barely had enough time to recognize as a crowbar came down, producing another _Splat!_

With exquisite timing, the walkers occupying the park shifted apart then at the exact moment to allow Rick to see how that crowbar smashing directly onto the top of a skull had just turned the whole rotting head into a disgusting spray of blood, bone, and liquefied brains sent everywhere, including all over the other walkers and upwards into the sky. Gravity next caused every bit of this biological refuse to fall to the ground, explaining the previous splashing noises. This realization next caused Rick to retch and cringe back into the alley. He banged up against Glenn, who hadn't been able to see anything yet.

Unthinkingly, an irritated Glenn yelped, "Hey, what're you doing-!"

Daryl's vicious warning snarl under his breath sent towards Glenn instantly shut up that other man. When the undead could zero onto their prey by sound alone, you didn't ever open your mouth around them without good cause. Complaining about getting unexpectedly elbowed in no way counted as a good cause. Glenn knew Daryl already disliked him, so that tough guy wouldn't feel the slightest compunction about leaving behind some loudmouth asshole to the tender mercies of the nearest walkers.

Taking a nervous step away from a glaring Daryl, Glenn found himself past Rick leaning against the alley wall. Gratefully seizing the opportunity to both avoid further pissing off Daryl and having a look at what'd just made Rick almost toss his cookies, Glenn did his own peek past the building corner. Two seconds later, there came another _Splat!_ sound.

Daryl observed with genuine bogglement how that little turd suddenly reeled backwards, turned to the other men in the alley with a pale face almost white as milk, and managed, "Eyeballs can really bounce, you know that?" before bending over to puke on the alley floor.

At this point, Daryl just _had_ to see this for himself. Making one last quick check around the alley for any potential walkers dropping by and not finding any, Daryl strode past Rick straightening up and a still-heaving Glenn to stand just barely outside the alley on the street sidewalk. Doing another swift security inspection of his immediate surroundings from hard-earned experience, Daryl recognized that all the real action was going on in that park, carried out by…

"Who the fuck is that?"

Daryl's astonished tone of voice brought Rick and a mostly-recovered Glenn outside on the sidewalk with him. They all stared at whom they could now see moving around on the right side of the undead crowd while whittling down their decaying numbers one by one, _Splat!_ after _Splat!_

This person taking only a single blow with their crowbar to shatter the heads of walkers was entirely clad from head to toe in a thick blanket or sheet that was now covered with dripping red/grey slime while the ends of this dragged along the ground. Two hands also covered and reaching out from under this protective wrapping kept the crowbar in a firm grasp throughout all of its deadly work. Other than this, nothing could be seen of some killer who moved as gracefully as a ballet dancer.

Fortunately, there weren't any other walkers in the town except at the park, or a mutually gaping Rick, Glenn, and Daryl might've been taken unawares from behind. Instead, they continued to watch with absolute disbelief during the eradication of the undead throng.

Once the very last _Splat!_ was done, followed by the collapse of a headless corpse onto the park grass now soaked with blood, the figure in their blanket stood frozen, holding onto the crowbar as if they thought the walkers would get up again and need another good wallop. Shaking themselves out of a shared daze over what they'd just witnessed, the three men glanced at each other as if wondering who'd be the first to call out to this person with their back turned to them.

After a quiet staredown among the trio which resulted in Rick glumly accepting the responsibility for this, he turned his attention back to-

Where a short individual was now standing right in front of them all. They hadn't even heard that mysterious executioner move!

Simultaneously flinching away, Rick, Glenn, and Daryl at least managed to not scream like little kids. They instead watched with disbelief while the blanketed person dropped with a clatter the crowbar onto the street. Next came the blanket being lifted and thrown back to reveal…

A very hot young woman, maybe college age, dressed in spotless Valley Girl style, who now brashly declared to all of her gawking company, "That'll put marzipan in your pie plate, bingo!"

As one, Rick, Glenn, and Daryl's jaws dropped even further. This wasn't helped by that woman then glancing around in evident confusion while further chattering to nobody in particular, "This isn't Sunnydale, but I killed lots of demons anyway and stayed nice and clean! How do I find Dawn and Willow and Xander? Why am I here? Did Spike build me again?"

Beginning to nonchalantly step back away in unison from that loony young lady, the men halted in their tracks at how she impatiently shook her head and stared directly at Daryl. Who, in turn, eyed her with dubious wariness which turned into full-grown panic at next hearing from Miss Insane Blonde a contemplative announcement:

"I wanna hurt you, but I can't resist the sinister attraction of your cold and muscular body!"


	2. Chapter 2

Rupert Giles glared at the two guilty culprits nervously standing next to each other in front of his office desk. If he'd _wanted_ to be some sort of clichéd headmaster for a private educational facility with all of its disruptive students, eccentric staff, and an unknowing public who thought the Joyce Summers Academy was a completely ordinary boarding school, Giles would've chosen an entirely different career path starting at his late teens. Oh, that was right, him becoming a Watcher had still eventually led to this Englishman as being the person in charge of the New Council and bearing all the many responsibilities for this position. Which, by the by, forced this mature man to deal with such utterly moronic issues as the reason Dawn Summers and Andrew Wells were here for today.

In an acid voice which sounded as if it could etch glass, Giles demanded from the pair summoned to judgment, "How the bloody hell do you lose a robot?"

Dawn and Andrew shiftily met each others' gazes out of the corners of their eyes. Next, the young man and the girl his age sent in concert a hopeful glance at the left portion of the office where Willow was seated in a couch up against the far wall. Seemingly paying no attention to the silent appeal coming from Dawn and Andrew, Willow went on scrolling through her laptop perched onto her thighs. Noting how this lack of reaction from Willow was making the young twits suffer even more, Giles leaned back in his chair and maintained a basilisk stare towards the younger Scoobies without another word for the next few moments.

Just when the tense office atmosphere was about to become even more strained, Willow announced without looking up from the laptop screen she'd been steadily reading, "Me, I'd rather know exactly how you sneaked the purchase of a level four biohazard airlock past the guys in Accounting as part of your shared term paper on inter-dimensional portals, Dawn."

Profoundly grateful that question hadn't been directed to him in particular, Andrew unconsciously leaned away from Dawn, leaving her totally on her own. Noticing this, Dawn scowled at a traitorous research partner and impulsively decided that if she was going down in flames, Andrew was coming along, too, as well-flambéed as she could manage.

"He's the one who put the order slip in the to-do files! We never really thought they'd go for it! All it was up to that point was just an idea we were playing around with in the middle of a Stargate marathon!"

Feeling he'd missed something here, Giles cast a quizzical glance at where Willow was finally giving the standing pair a very jaundiced look. She sighed at them, "So that's when you had the bright idea to combine the Stargate program's MALP rover with a Buffybot to investigate other dimensions?"

"Er, what's a MALP, anyone?" broke in Giles who had three heads turn towards him at that specific mystified question. It was Willow who answered, though, in the same weary voice she'd just used on Dawn and Andrew.

"The initials stand for a Mobile All-Terrain Laboratory Probe, Giles. It's a miniature remote-controlled wheeled drone vehicle loaded with attached instruments and sensors to find out the local conditions on other planets reachable through a wormhole connecting separate parts of the universe hundreds of light-years apart. Most important of all, that piece of technology from a science fiction television show is totally imaginary!" ended Willow with a derisive sniff.

Andrew indignantly spoke up, "But the Buffybot isn't! I already had the schematics and parts to build one, so after we worked out everything in advance, Anne was sent through…"

It was right then and there that Andrew trailed off while every sweat pore on his skin promptly burst into overdrive, turning both armpits and his crotch into odiferous swamps. He, like every other human on earth, had as part of this normal flight-or-fight response inherited from ancient primates who'd just realized the small, pink cavern with pointy white stalagmites and stalactites at all four corners was in fact a lion's open mouth they'd just been about to walk inside.

The fearsome expression presently upon Willow Rosenberg's features easily matched the time years ago that a now-terrified Andrew remembered when he'd gone on the run after Warren had murdered the Red Witch's girlfriend and horribly paid for that crime. Too scared to even move, Andrew merely closed his eyes and waited for death.

A concerned Giles and Dawn didn't dare to interfere, either. Holding their breaths, these two watched Willow struggle for control, her scarlet hair developing streaks of black throughout. Fortunately, Willow soon calmed down sufficiently to regain her normal human temper rather than embodying the supreme force of supernatural power which had one day in the past nearly destroyed the entire world. It didn't mean that Willow was going to let off easily today Dawn and especially jerk-face Andrew.

Icily lecturing them both, Willow admitted, "Your safety protocols were perfectly fine, I have to say. You did a real good job keeping anything bad from getting through Dawn's portal to here. However, the big problem has to do with sending a _magical_ construct the other way to a baseline universe!"

Dawn risked, "Well, sure. We wanted a simple starting point for comparisons, so what's wrong with that, picking a dimension without any magic?" Even if Dawn had been about to argue with Willow with her above opening statement, the Key felt her mood abruptly sink due to seeing how Wils started a slow, sad headshake at Dawn's final words.

Willow then explained. "Dawn, there's no way a Buffybot can exist without magic. Technology just isn't advanced enough today to create an actual artificial intelligence. You need magic now to add to the programming that'll mimic the human personality close enough to fool other people, much less work the way it's supposed to. So, if you sent…Anne…to a magic-less dimension, that robot probably malfunctioned at once, shorting out completely. The best case is, it was somewhere remote where the body won't ever be found."

Dawn traded appalled glances with Andrew, who'd recovered somewhat from finding out he'd survive this day. She turned back to where Willow was thoughtfully going on.

"On the other hand, dimensions lacking that much mystical energy are a lot rarer than you might think. There's usually _some,_ mostly in life-bearing worlds like this one. Even if the people there can't tap into it at all or only occasionally so that they think magic is just stories, this still exists. Which translates into the potential for major weirdness when something with magic already in it comes from out of nowhere into that new dimension."

"Such as?" inquired a worried Giles, bringing a baffled shrug from Willow.

"Honestly, _anything_ could happen. Imagine a magnet the size of a backpack being dropped into a swimming pool filled to the brim with powdered iron. It's just as possible magic everywhere will be instantly attracted to the Buffybot, but I can't predict what'll happen to it after that. All I know is this robot is extremely unlikely to ever come back through the portal here. If Dawn and Andrew decide to try again, it'll probably end the same way."

Straightening up in his chair, Giles solemnly declared, "Oh, no, it damned well won't."

He fiercely glowered at the duo beyond his office desk now pinned under his unblinking frown. "Your research project is now finished, done with, _over._ Turn in everything you have on hand - your materials, papers, et cetera - and start with a completely new one. Keep in mind that this time, there _will_ be full and continuous oversight on whatever you lot come up with! Also, don't you have a portal to close before a Stygian monster from elsewhere decides to come through it and see if the whole of mankind is indeed crunchy and good with catsup?"

Gladly making a break for the office door, Dawn and Andrew almost made it before a final clearing of someone's throat was made from behind them. Pausing to glance over their shoulders, the youngest Scoobies saw how Rupert Giles was smiling evilly at them.

"One more thing, Dawn, Andrew. Buffy will be back with Xander and Vi from their demon-hunting mission in Warsaw sometime tonight, so you can meditate upon your sins until then. Of course, confession is good for the soul, so kindly tell your sister at the first opportunity everything you've been up to with her latest robot double. Pass along to her that whatever punishment she decides for you both is fine with me. Now, don't let me keep you here, hmm?"

The closing door clicked shut after Dawn and Andrew despondently slunk together out of the room. Only then did Willow let loose her gleeful sniggers which echoed throughout the office.

Looking over at where a laughing witch was seated on the couch, Giles let a contented expression settle on his lined countenance. However difficult his job was at times, there were also the occasional perks, including terrorizing wayward subordinates like any proper school headmaster. When you had a Slayer on hand with serious identity issues which hadn't been helped the slightest in Sunnydale by having a perfect double with a total lack of tact and an obsession with a pomaded blond vampire, why would you actually need to carry out corporal punishment with a cane upon some malefactor's upturned rear in the Prefect's Room?

Finally quieting down, Willow grinned at her fellow office occupant. She then said in a musing tone, "You know, Giles, I didn't get a chance to say this before, but the Buffybot might find herself back to what she'd been like the first time we met her. Or, even improved for the better."

Giles' eyebrows lifted in mild surmise. "What, you mean as an effect from going to that new dimension?"

"Yup," Willow nodded.

Thinking it over, Giles allowed himself a faint shudder. "Just as long as that other android doesn't behave the same way the original did around _me._"

* * *

In another world filled with zombies:

"It's D-A-R-Y-L! Daryl! Stop calling me the wrong name!"

"Okay, Darrell. Now take off your pants and make me a woman!"


End file.
